Wonderful new Green Hindu Temple Guide

December 21, 2015:

The Bhumi Project and ARC have created a wonderful new Green Hindu Temples Guide: a beautifully-designed, resource, first published in December 2015, on how to make your temple or ashram greener and better and more Hindu in its relationship with the world around it.

It contains inspiring sections on teaching, recycling, energy, food and protecting wild animals. For each section it includes both environmental and Hindu reasons for making changes, as well as helpful lists and action points. Including:

Ten things your temple can do to make worship,
pujas and celebrations greener

2. Centre your celebrations around
environmental themes and on special days
such as Earth Day and around the annual
Hindu Environment Week in February

3. Make sure waste is disposed of effectively
at all your festivals. Make this part of the
early planning rather than something
thought of at the end

4. Get young people involved in the clean
up; give them eco banners and sashes or
branded T-shirts, and get them to contact
local stall holders during procession to
explain why they need to be eco and
make sure they have rubbish bins outside
their stall

5. Make the cleaning up a celebratory and
holy activity in itself. Get important people
to clean up after celebrations to show that
this is not something for street sweepers

6. Be mindful of ways that noise, lights
and traffic can be limited during your
celebrations around environmentally
sensitive areas

7. Use environmentally friendly paints
(and not lead paints) when painting
statues of deities

8. Perform blessings over cows and other
threatened wildlife and wild places

9. Source the majority of food locally to
minimize fuel use for transport

December 16, 2015:Pilgrim to Santiago writes about how the Way taught him to be greenA three times pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain reports about his experience being a green pilgrim, and about how the "camino" has taught him the importance of living sustainably. Landon Roussel's book The Camino Primitivo is published this month.